


Things You Said When You Thought I Was Asleep

by Mx Magic Fluffenmew (PerpetuallyDone)



Series: Reconnection [2]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 18:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21020126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerpetuallyDone/pseuds/Mx%20Magic%20Fluffenmew
Summary: In which Ratchet is proud, and Gyro should have swallowed his own pride. (A Tumblr Request)





	Things You Said When You Thought I Was Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> DRAKOTTS ASKED:  
"things you said when you thought i was asleep", with perhaps... dear old grandpa ratchet and gyro?

Ratchet traveled the world so much in his youth and into his not-so-youthful years. He could write several books on his adventures and the things he’d witnessed, the things he experienced, the things that he lived wholeheartedly. From the incidents his inventions got him into, to the scraps they got him out of, and all the interesting people he met in between.

But those days were over now.

He could finally write those books if he so chose. Though that would require so much time sitting still in his office, scribbling away stories that would come off as fantasy. Oh so many hours and days spent cooped up inside, when in all honesty he had other, far more important matters to attend to.

He hadn’t seen his son in ages. Whether that were actuality or just the bitter feeling in his heart, he wasn’t sure. 

It felt like he hadn’t seen his grandchild in even longer. The bitter feeling turned sour.

But he planned to change that right then and there! He just needed to find the address on their last letter. Before that, he needed to find which trousers he last tucked it away in…

—

It took several pairs for him to find the letter, but it only took one map to find the right route. He made it to Duckburg in record time, and he even remembered to give Fulton a forewarning of his arrival.

His son took the day off from his repair shop, and they spent the afternoon on the porch, filling each other in on all the things that couldn’t fit in letters (though admittedly, they had tried to.) Of old mishaps and new marvels, new friends and old faces, they didn’t stop flapping their gums until his grandchild came home from school.

Gyro, he called himself now.

It was a darn good name, he told him. Smart sounding. Why if he had another son, he might have gone and stolen it from him.

Ratchet learned that Gyro was a lot like him. In fact, he was more like him than Fulton. While his son faired fine and dandy in his shop, fixing lamps and radios, his grandson had bigger ideas. 

_Much _bigger ideas.

From attachments to trees so they could rake themselves, to raincoats for two, the boy’s mind never stopped running. Though he may have buried the house once or twice, almost sent the dog to the moon, and the raincoat was a bit too snug, he didn’t stop. 

Not that either of them wanted to stop him. 

When Fulton went inside and left him with Gyro, he got to hear all about his marvelous inventions. In fact, his grandson got so excited, he even brought him around back to a shed Fulton built for him that he dubbed his laboratory. Blueprints taped to the wall and laid out on tables, pinned down by stray tools and parts. Projects in different states scattered about the room on every single free surface. When there was no more room, they sat along the wall, on the floor.

Ratchet’s heart swelled with pride, and he made sure to tell Gyro exactly that. (Though he wasn’t quite sure if the boy heard him, as much as he rambled on and on.)

Eventually, the two of them were called back inside for dinner. 

The meal came and went, and after they went their separate ways. Ratchet had come a long way, after all. As much as he didn’t like to admit it, he was getting on in years. He needed a bit of rest every once in a while. Though now that he had no plans of leaving Duckburg any time soon, rest would surely come easier. 

Before he went to bed for the evening, he made sure to say good night. First to his son, and then to his grandson. Despite the late hour, Gyro’s light still peeked from beneath the door. When he knocked, however, he didn’t hear a thing.

Concern crept up in his mind. After one more knock without response, he quietly turned the knob and opened the door.

There at the desk sat Gyro, if you could call it sitting. He hunched over in his chair, upper body sprawled out across the surface, papers rumbled beneath him. His glass sat askew on his beak, fluff of hair caught behind one lenses.

With a fond smile and a shake of his head, Ratchet chuckled as he stepped further into the room. He couldn’t say he was surprised to find Gyro was the sort to work until he collapsed. He was too full of energy, too full of ideas. 

Not wanting him to wake up stiff or a kink in his neck, Ratchet carefully leaned him back before scooping him up in his arms. One arm under his legs, the other around his back, head lolling against his shoulder. He couldn’t help but chuckle again at the sight of him.

“You’re going to need to be more careful, son,” he murmured, despite knowing Gyro couldn’t hear him from his dreams. "If you make this a habit, you’ll be a hazard to your own health. What good will you do the world if you’re walking like an old man before you’re twenty?“

He came up to the bed, unmade and rumbled. Shaking his head once more with a soft sigh, he laid his grandson down on the barest spot he could find. "And I _know_ you’re going to do some great things.”

Reaching over, he slipped Gyro’s glasses off his face with one hand. With the other, he gently smoothed his hair away from his face. "You just need to work out the details. Iron out the wrinkles.“ 

He set the glasses down atop one of the many journals on the bedside table, then turned back to the bed. Grabbing the edge of the blanket, he pulled it up and over Gyro, pausing to tuck the edges in. Sleep always felt better when you were snug, he thought. 

Once he properly tucked him into bed for the night, Ratchet leaned down and pressed a kiss to Gyro’s forehead. "You’ll get there one day, Gyro. I just know it.”

Straightening himself up, he then turned and left, making sure to not step on any wayward books or shoes. He turned off the light, and shut the door quietly, completely unaware of the eyes watching him from the bed.

Gyro slept the best he had in years that night.

—

That was one of the last good nights of sleep Gyro swore he ever had. It felt like the older he got, the more shit hit the fan. Faith was nice, but any fool could have faith. There were whole, giant groups of people with faith out there who thought it would change their very lives.

It did little for his.

One failure after another, and even when things turned out _okay_, they weren’t good _enough_. Whether to him or to that atrocious board.

If faith could have gotten him places, he would have been bigger than Scrooge McDuck.

If faith could have gotten him places, maybe he wouldn’t be where he was.

At that moment, Gyro was in the hospital. Not for himself, no. 

For his grandfather.

It was only a matter of years after Ratchet’s visit that Gyro started to fall out from his family. They were proud, yes, but pride didn’t fix problems. <strike>It created them.</strike>

If pride could have gotten him places, he could have been like a god.

If pride could have gotten him places, maybe he could have come sooner, or somehow not cared period.

In the past year, he had tried to fix that, but like all the other things he tried to fix, it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t until the end of his visit with Fulton did he hear a single thing about his grandfather.

Ratchet was sick.

Ratchet had been sick for a long time.

No one told Gyro.

So there he sat beside the sterile white bed with a man just as pale. In the dead of night, visitors weren’t allowed, but he managed to get away with it. (Even if it wasn’t in the most legal of ways, but it wouldn’t have been the first time Fenton bailed him out of jail.)

Though he wasn’t sure he was there in any sense, Gyro held his grandfather’s hand.

The room was deathly silent.

It had been for too long.

He needed to go soon, but he didn’t want to. Nurses staring through the window be damned.

He desperately tried to fight back tears that rolled down his cheeks, staining the sheets grey.

He told himself he was just sleeping. That maybe if he squeezed his hand tight enough, he’d squeeze back. Maybe he would open his eyes, and he could finally tell him he got all of his letters. (He wouldn’t tell him he never read them.)

“…Thanks for believing in me, granddad. People sometimes said you were a mad man, but… A mad man is just what I needed.”


End file.
